This is usually accomplished by recovering passwords from data stored in, or transported from, a computer system. Password cracking is done by either repeatedly guessing the password, usually through a computer algorithm in which the computer tries numerous combinations until the password is successfully discovered.
This results in cybercrime such as stealing passwords for the purpose of accessing banking information. Other, nonmalicious, reasons for password cracking occur when someone has misplaced or forgotten a password. Another example of nonmalicious password cracking may take place if a system administrator is conducting tests on password strength as a form of security so that hackers cannot easily access protected systems.
The best way that users can protect their passwords from cracking is to ensure they choose strong passwords. Typically, passwords must contain a combination of mixed-case random letters, digits and symbols. Strong passwords should never be actual words. In addition, strong passwords are at least eight characters long. In many password-protected applications, users are notified of the strength of the password they've chosen upon entering it.
The user can then modify and strengthen the password based on the indications of its strength. Other, more stringent, techniques for password security include key stretching algorithms like PBKDF2. Algorithms create hashes of passwords that are designed to protect passwords from being readily cracked. Security tokens constantly shift passwords so that even if a password is cracked, it can be used for a very limited amount of time.
If the original password can be determined then other passwords with similar characteristics can be cracked too. Once a password has been successfully cracked there are sometimes follow-up attacks to perform certain tasks: privilege escalation, installing backdoors , data exfiltration, etc.
A rainbow attack is a type of password cracking that uses different words from the original password to generate all other possible passwords. A rainbow table attack is an additional method that can be used to crack passwords.
Rainbow tables exploit the fact that password hashes are not secure when it comes to protecting against cracking attacks by storing pre-calculated values of encrypted hashes for each possible word in a large database, which makes it easy to check whether the hash value has been cracked or not when a certain word is identified as the actual password.
In essence, this mechanism performs many of its calculations before even accessing the storage where all those values are stored. Rainbow table attack can crack hashes that are much longer and more complex than wordlists.
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While guessing is far from the most popular password cracking technique, it relates to business-oriented spidering above.
If you recall using one or more of the pathetic passwords in the list below, we strongly recommend changing them now. Some of the most common passwords worldwide:. Those often include names of pets, lovers, pet-lovers, ex-pets, or something related to the actual service, like its name lowercase.
As mentioned above, one of the first things to do when password cracking is getting the password in the form of a hash. Then you create a table of common passwords and their hashed versions and check if the one you want to crack matches any entries. Experienced hackers usually have a rainbow table that also involves leaked and previously cracked passwords, making it more effective.
Most often, rainbow tables have all possible passwords that make them extremely huge , taking up hundreds of GBs. On the other hand, they make the actual attack faster because most of the data is already there and you only need to compare it with the targeted hash-password.
Luckily, most users can protect themselves from such attacks with large salts and key stretching, especially when using both. If the salt is large enough, say bit, two users with the same password will have unique hashes. This means that generating tables for all salts will take an astronomical amount of time. As for the key stretching, it increases the hashing time and limits the number of attempts that the attacker can make in given time.
No password cracking starts without proper tools. When you have to guess from billions of combinations, some computational assistance is more than welcome. As always, each tool has its pros and cons. Here is a list, in no particular order, of the most popular password cracking tools. Featured in many popular password cracking tools lists, John the Ripper is a free, open-source, command-based application. Word lists used in password cracking are on sale, but free options are available as well.
This is a multi-purpose tool, capable of many different functions. If you already have the hash, this tool will offer a dictionary or brute force attack option. Ophcrack is a free and open-source password cracking tool that specializes in rainbow table attacks.
As you can see in the screenshot above, it took Ophcrack merely six seconds to crack an 8-symbol password while using a rainbow table that includes letters, numbers, and uppercases. Ophcrack is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Arguably the strongest point of THC Hydra is not the possible number of heads it can grow but the sheer number of protocols it supports that seems to be growing too!
The methods available with THC Hydra include brute force and dictionary attacks while also using wordlists generated by other tools.
This password cracker is known for its speed thanks to the multi-threaded combination testing. It can even run checks on different protocols simultaneously. It offers a number of techniques, from simple brute force attack to hybrid mask with wordlist. This makes cracking multiple hashes simultaneously much faster. But what makes this tool truly universal is the number of supported hash types. In fact, it supports over hash types. But before you can start cracking, you need to have the password hash first.
Here are some of the most popular tools for getting hash :. No matter how good your memory or your password manager is, failing to create a good password will lead to undesired consequences. As we discussed in this article, password cracking tools can decipher weak passwords in days, if not hours. If you would like to learn more about creating good passwords, consider checking out our How to create a strong password article.
You can also try our password generator that will help you to come up with safe passwords. For starters, all password cracking tools described above are perfectly legal.
So as it often is, password cracking can help the good and the bad cause. As to the password cracking as an activity, it depends on two factors.
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